Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

The good;
Very, very good ep, lovely way to round out the series and a great send off for the characters. Many, many nice little features including Harding and his allergy to shellfish again and Victor still having Ernesto the Acrobat in his memories.

The bad;
Joss WHY NO COMMENTARY? You didn't do one for the last ep of Angel either. Or are you saving it for Special Edition DVDs to fund your new project? That said the dinner party is a nice touch.When Adele leads the Dolls into the streets outside where have all the butchers gone? The idea that Victor, Echo and Sierra have to hide underground for a year to escape Topher's pulse is just silly.

Best line;
Alpha; "We're not freak shows. Well ok I am. And Echo. But Adele's a class act all the way"
and
Adele; "I'm glad you didn't clean up"
Alpha; "It spoke to the schizophrenic in me. Well, both of them actually"

Packing heat; everyone armed to the teeth. For a guy who says he doesn't like guns Joss puts a heck of a lot of them in his shows.
Echo;15
Boyd; 11
Dominic; 10
Sierra; 9
Victor; 9
Ballard; 14
November; 2
Adele; 4

Echo kissage; 5
In the missing scenes we see that Echo/Rebecca got all kissy with Joel in the back of the van at the end of The Love Supreme

Kinky dinky;
Naked musclemen in chains. Say what you like about Joss he gives us cheesecake but for boys AND girls of all tastes and persuasions.

Capt subtext;
Note the tender way Adele feeds Topher whom she refers to as 'darling'. She offers to die with him but he wants her to live. Mag seems to have the hots for Kilo and vice versa, Zone commenting that she now has the option to 'go down'. Adele and Echo finally embrace. The butchers are now wearing suits, do they represent the network executives that cancelled the show?

How'd they get away with that?
Paul is dead...(hmmm? Have I heard that somewhere before?). Once again shot in the head with his brains all over another character, in this case poor Mag.

Total number personalitites; note 'mini-me' refers to herself as Caroline? But in every other way she's Echo, able to access all the memories in her head. Ballard refers to 100 people in Echo's head. 101 including him. Suprisingly the series doesn't end with Caroline getting her body back, she's just one of the personalities in Echo's head.
Echo; 101
Sierra; 13
Victor; 11
November; 3

Total LA dolls; Kilo again, for a second I thought it might be Ivy. We also have Romeo and Yankee
11-Echo, Sierra, November, Victor, Mike, Tango, Alpha, Whiskey, Kilo, Romeo, Yankee

Subverting the Hollywood cliche;
Psycho killer Alpha pops up in his usual sinister fashion....and get's a great big hug from everyone!

Missing scenes;.
The deleted scene from this ep is reminiscent of the ending to The Tripods, Zone, Mag and mini-me stumbling across a deserted camp but ready to start again. You can't help but feel bad for Adele when she tries to pick up Victor in the bar in Stop Loss, he actually offers to take her home but she knows she's not the girl he's waiting for.

Reminds me of;
Wizard of Oz again, the 'great and terrible' Caroline. The method by which Rossum force Topher to work for them is similar to how Lorne is forced to work in Vegas in the Angel ep 'The House Always Wins'. Sierra/Priya appears to be auditioning for the remake of Little House on the Prarie. In contrast we have Mad Max Victor.

Whedon cliches; strawberries again! Also in Alpha we have the series greatest villain becoming the series greatest hero (Spike, Angel, Illyria, the agent in Serenity;the movie)
Maimed characters. Rich and powerful famillies who cover up the evil deeds of their wayward sons. Top security installations which aren't secure at all. Loving self-sacrificing mothers who risk all for their children. Corporate politics literally played with deadly seriousness. Monty Python quoting villains. Offices full of zombies. Strawberries. Sleeper agents. One girl who holds the secret to everything. Villains who become heroes.

Breaking the programming;
Note the butchers are now using guns, they're evolving too.

Questions and observations;
So what happened between the events of The Hollow Men and Epitaph 2? An awful lot it seems! Presumably everyone makes their way back to the Dollhouse once the world starts going to hell. What happens between Adele and Echo so that Echo is on the point of killing her in Epitaph One? Presumably the vaccine that makes everyone immune to imprinting is derived from Echo's spinal fluid as we saw in the previous ep? Does Alpha have the same ability and is that how he created safe haven? What does Topher go 'huh' for at the very last moment when he looks at the 'Remember' wall? Love Adele's new family, her, Zone and mini-me ex-Caroline, she can start again, ever the Shepherd leading them into the light (we've seen how good she is with kids from her relationship with Victor/Sierra's son). Alpha finds it amusing that Romeo refers to him as a 'luddite' (groups of disgruntled workers who opposed the industrial revolution). Nice that they could work Summer Glau into the final ep through Topher's vid.
So what happened to Ivy, Dominic, Alpha, Perrin, Whiskey etc? I guess we have to leave it to the fanfic? Who kept sending Ballard all the clues to the Dollhouse, was it Alpha? I like Joss' idea of Echo and co as the post apocalyptic A-team, I'd watch that.

Marks out of 10; 10/10

So that's Dollhouse. Good series and enjoyed it a lot. If I were to rate Joss's series I would score them as;
Buffy; 10/10-best TV show of all time
Angel; 10/10 (only beaten by Buffy because we had more Buffy eps)
Dollhouse; 8/10
Firefly; 7/10
For all you Browncoats who now want to lynch me maybe I'd like Firefly better if there'd been more eps but it only had 16 compared to 27 for Dollhouse, if Firefly had been given a greater chance it might have done better. I think Firefly's problem is that as a space show it was quite expensive in terms of special effects, costumes, sets, makeup etc whilst Dollhouse could be filmed just on an ordinary street. Looking back over the eps I'd say Epitaph 1&2 are my favourites with A Love Supreme and Man on the Street coming up behind them, Spy in the House of Love also in the top 5 and I have a soft spot for Haunted. I think Dollhouse had less of a sense of fun than Buffy or Angel although Topher was a funny character, it was all more grown up. The Dolls didn't grow on you in their dazed state and the other characters weren't sympathectic or charismactic enough. Certainly glad I watched it though, enjoyed it immensely. Apart from Eliza in sexy outfits the standout for me was Enver as Victor who really showed some amazing range and talent in his various Doll characters
Dollhouse assignment's I would have like to have seen;

1. Definitely a musical, it would be great if you were splitting up with you partner and you could start singing 'Take another little piece of my heart now baby' in a restraunt with all the other diners joining in the singing and dancing (think Glee for real).

2. Something with superheroes/supeheroines, either the client being rescued by them, acting the superhero and triumphing over the Supervillain dolls or playing the villain and defeating the superhero Dolls.

3. Some sort of historical drama (surprised they didn't do that in the show) where an enthusiast get's them to recreate the gunfight at the Ok Corral or Custer's Last Stand etc

4. Get the Dolls to act out famous comedy sketches for real (as Sierra suggested in one ep). The Class sketch would be my first pick.

5. A rich sci-fi geek hires the Doll's to be the crew of his starship on a movie set (and when he calls for evasive manouvres they all pitch from one side to the other as they did on the series).

6. A victim of homophobia getting his/her revenge on their tormentors who suddenly find themselves in a world where EVRYONE is gay and they're the freaks.

7. A military wannabe hiring a squad of Dolls to re-enact a battle and give him a real taste of what genuine combat is like.

8. A victim of wrongful imprisonment re-enacts their trial to attempt to understand how the jury convicted him.

9. The writer of a prematurely cancelled TV show hires the Dolls to act out the final season storylines they really wanted to write (I think you know where I'm going here).

10. The prodigal son reassembles his dead family using the Dolls to tell them he's sorry for not making things up with them when they were alive.

11. A chess obsessive hires the Dolls out to enact a full-sized game.

12. A famous author suffers from writers block and hires some Dolls to act out the various plot ideas of his latest book to try and break the impasse.

13. A rabid right-winger who hires the Dolls to act as hippies whom he persuades of his arguments.

14. A rabid left-winger who hires the Dolls to act as yuppies who are persuaded by his arguments.